Friday, April 13, 2012
Creative Problem Solving: Forget the Focus
fabbs.org: People have long suspected that creativity can be summoned with a glass of wine or a pint of beer, but science is just now confirming that suspicion. Cognitive psychologist Jennifer Wiley says alcohol enhances creative problem solving by reducing our ability to focus our attention on something. In other words, it diminishes what scientists refer to as our working memory capacity, or WMC.
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2 comments:
This parallels a recent phenomenon that we've been covering in my elective Cognitive Psychology: how the 'sleep on it' approach is conducive to problem solving, and it basically boils down to purging working memory, e.g., fixation on a particular approach, and allowing memory to go search for more associations in relevant schemas that may offer solutions. While it's novel that alcohol can do this as well, we can convince ourselves to do it reasonably effectively if we really try to stand back from the situation, i.e., "think outside the box".
I am familiar with the approach that Daniel touched on in his comment. I always find that if I sleep on my arm propped up whenever I am stuck solving something - when I doze off my arm falls and I wake up. Usually I can come to a solution in my half state of consciousness because I can connect ideas more creatively and abstractly. I think it is a little hard to pinpoint a .07 alcohol level - so you may want to be careful when you mix drinking with drafting. I am also really fond of the idea of changing your routine. My most effective approaches to completing assignment has been when I work on them on different days at different times. Each day I sit down I am in a different state of mind and can realize different problems and solutions that I may not have noticed in one sitting.
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